After completing the transformation of an abandoned watch factory into a much-publicized Montessori school in its home city of Bengaluru, India, in 2014, architecture firm Collective Project received tons of inquiries for schools, says partner Eliza Higgins. Most were from for-profit institutions. Having designed one elite private school, Higgins and partner Cyrus Patell wanted more meaningful work. “Finding the right project as architects who want to have an impact is difficult, especially in education,” Higgins explains. “Schools here are typically seen as an opportunity to make money.”

The right opportunity arrived in 2016 when the Penna Foundation, a philanthropic arm of Penna Cement, one of the largest privately held cement companies in India, approached the architects with a brief to devise a prototype scheme to re-envision three existing schools, all in various stages of disrepair, built for the children of the company’s factory workers. Penna’s request—initiated through a government corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandate requiring businesses of a certain size to invest a percentage of their profits in public works—was embraced by the incoming younger generation of the family-run cement maker. Having seen Collective Project’s work for Montessori, they realized better facilities would attract better teachers, provide a higher-quality education, and ultimately be a positive force on the remote factory communities.